The express-yourself yard

Editor's pick / special mention

Let loose your creativity. That’s the message in this San Francisco garden where salvaged chalkboards, mounted to a galvanized steel wall, encourage impromptu scribbling (chalk is tucked into boxes mounted to the wall’s back). Out front, plastic fish bob in a tall, fiberglass fountain. But the staircase is just as mesmerizing: Its risers colorfully glow the words of poet e.e. cummings beside a constellation of wall lights. Once you climb the stairs, you wind up in a child’s secret garden.

Design: Topher Delaney, Topher Delaney/Seam Studio, San Francisco (tdelaney.com or 415/621-9899).